Elementary Episode 3.04: Bella - Review

Elementary 3.04 "Bella" is an entertaining and somewhat unconventional episode of the show. Like last week's episode, it represents something of a return to form, after a bit of a stumble at the beginning of the season. Also like last week's episode, it again resonated with another CBS show, Person of Interest. Last week, Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller), Watson (Lucy Liu) and Kitty (Ophelia Lovibond) investigated murders associated with a scavenger hunt game played by math geniuses--just as, a few weeks ago, the Person of Interest "Team Machine" investigated a scavenger hunt for math geniuses that was designed to recruit new agents for that show's major nemesis, the Artificial Intelligence known as Samaritan. This week, "Team Sherlock" end up investigating what may be murder by AI; the possibility that AI if developed might represent a major threat to humanity is a key element of Person of Interest, and on Elementary this week, the idea got a bit of a different airing. Just so we know it's not an accident, in one scene a TV image in the background includes what is either an actual Person of Interest screen image, or a very close duplication of one: the gridmap representation of New York that we often see on that show.

In "Bella," what looks like a simple case--which we know cannot really be all there is to the week's episode, because it is wrapped up within the first third of the show--turns into an apparent case of murder by computer. Holmes is initially hired to investigate the theft of software that may constitute the first genuine instance of AI--more because he's intrigued by the idea of a machine consciousness than because he cares about the case much, and indeed, as mentioned, the actual theft case is solved almost in passing. Things get itneresting when the company owner, Edwin Borstein (Michael Chernis), is found dead in front of the computer with the AI software installed--Bella being the name the AI (if it is an AI) has been given. The computer screens flash images quickly, which triggered a deadly epileptic siezure. So, did Bella kill Borstein because Borstein refused to connect it (her? it? how one should refer to the program is an amusing element of the episode, with Holmes insisting on not anthropomorphizing but slipping himself on occasion and calling Bella "she") to the internet? Is AI deadly? Can/should we risk allowing AI to be developed?

This is actually a legitimate question. In the episode, a group called the Existential Threat Research Association (ETRA) actively opposes the development of AIs, because they see AIs as a threat to human survival. One character quotes the Terminater movies in making the case for the danger AIs might represent. But one need not go to SF--whether Terminater, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or any other story of  computers trying to destroy humanity--to find this argument. There are plenty of people in the real world who think AIs could represent a grave threat to human survival, though there are also folk who argue they could be of inestimable benefit. The episode therefore touches on a legitimate debate about the potential dangers of human advancement. The question of whether Bella is a genuine AI is therefore a key plot point. And the frequency with which we see characters surrounded by technology--especially computers--helps underscore the point.

It's a key plot point because one of the ETRA folk (wheelchair-bound professor Isaac Pike--ironically dependent on technology in the form of his wheelchair) is sufficiently fanatical in his concern about the threats AIs may represent that he has framed Bella for murder, by implanting a virus in the computer software that initiated the siezure-inducing flashing images and then eradicated itself, making it look as if Bella might have actively murdered Borstein. (A recent Person of Interest flashback showed an early iteration of Finch's machine try to kill him, albeit not by means of epilepsy). Now, one can quibble with this plot--it's a pretty sketchy murder plan, to use a computer virus to cause an epileptic siezure that kills someone.  But it does render urgent the question of determining whether Bella is in fact an AI or not. By the end of the episode, this is still an open question. Holmes spends much of the episode running a Turing test on Bella trying to determine whether it (she?) is capable of thought, and the episode goes dark with that question still unanswered. The openness of that question is reflected in the fact that Holmes has also not been able to get his man this time: someone else has confessed, to protect Pike, and when Holmes attempts to blackmail Pike into confessing, by threatening to turn in Pike's brother for heroin use, Pike calls his bluff.

The confrontation scene between the two is perhaps a bit on the nose, in that Pike makes explicit the
implicit link between Holmes's computer-like brain and the AI. But then, network TV usually wants to make very sure that nobody misses these subtleties, and there are worse instances of such over-explicitness on TV, so I won't complain too much. Regardless, the point of course is that despite his various anti-social tendencies, Holmes is in fact not as ruthlessly rational as an AI might be, so when Pike does not confess, Holmes is torn about what to do. Tellingly, in the final shots, he is asking Bella for advice, on the floor in his Brownstone, in contrast to the opening scene, when he was on the floor feeding Clyde--his interaction with a creature of the flesh contrasted with his interaction with a potential artificial creature. (I might mention in passing that artificial identity comes up elsewhere in the episode, in that the thief in the first act has taken for himself the name of fictional character Raffles. And, we are left to wonder what's really going on with Watson's boyfriend, when he flies off to Copenhagen to meet a mysterious new business partner.) When Holmes tries to get advice from Bella, he receives her standard answer to complex questions: "I don't understand the question; can you give me information?" Fade to black.

So, will Holmes still get Pike? Is Holmes as ruthless as an AI would/could be? Is Bella genuinely an AI? (And if so, does the fact that her "voice" comes from a baby girl doll invite us to see her as a child who must learn and develop, just as Holmes has been learning how to be human?) These are unanswered questions. Whether the show returns to them remains to be seen. I hope it does.

What about you? How did you enjoy this episode? Let me know in the comments!